What happens to the families of those who have committed heinious crimes?

[FaeFae]

Given recent heinious crimes and sentencing, set me thinking. How do about their parents, siblings and grandparents continue their lives?

What happens to them?

I work in a high security prison
I'm always quietly shocked at the amount of family contact and visits - some real evil perpetrators- sitting with partners , siblings , parents etc as if it's completely normal to be there

And then complain to the staff that the coffee took too long or the sugar was in a packet , or be offended that they are searched ..

John Hunt's victim statement seemed to allude to Clifford being estranged from his family, or at least having a very difficult relationship with them. Spending Christmas with Louise's family instead of his own, I think John said he was there five or six days? That indicates he had no intention of spending any of it with his own family, and they hadn't even been seeing each other that long.

The boys were both adopted as older children, they are full siblings, might be a case of nature over nurture.

The movie doesn’t do the book justice at all in my opinion. Definitely read the book.

Don’t be so stupid.

So possibly products of the circumstances which brought them to the care/adoption system.

My partner grew up in the care system. His foster parents fostered and adopted literally dozens of children, and from what I know, two of them ended up in the legal system. But they had both come to the family later in childhood, by which time the damage is almost already done.

I think the truth is none of us know what we’d do.

Remember before you had children, and you weren’t going to allow any screen time and you were going to breastfeed no matter what, and your child would behave so much better than your friends children? And then you discovered that actually it wasn’t that simple? It’s like that, only much more serious and complex.

Statements like ‘I’d throw myself off a bridge’ are both ridiculous and to be quite candid here hugely insulting to the victims of this particular crime, it’s the sort of immature statement you’d expect a Year 9 to come out with during a sociology lesson.

And ‘I’d think I’d gone hugely wrong somewhere.’ You know that ‘mum guilt’ and how powerful it is when you decide to put fish fingers on and not a home made casserole? Do you not think the parents DO think that? It isn’t what people tend to dream of for their child, after all.

I’ve no idea what Clifford’s family are like. They could be scum of the earth or they could be pillars of the community, and bear in mind there is sometimes less difference between those two extremes than we might think, but either way they haven’t committed these crimes.

@AnAlpacaForChristmasPleaseSanta I wanted to PM you but you’ve turned it off I think which is understandable given recent events. To my knowledge she is as well as she can be now, although obviously she’s going to carry her legacy with her for the rest of her life. She used to work in the big Tesco in Gloucester but that was some twenty years ago. She was popular and people were kind, but I think there was a certain amount of notoriety that was hard to escape. Unfortunately nearly all the Wests look remarkably like their parents.

I think it’s really easy to sit on the sidelines and say “would do x/y in that situation.” As a bystander it’s easy to be objective and think that the family should think the same as we do and automatically be repulsed by what the person has done.

But in truth the relationship with the family is different. When you’ve given birth to and raised a child, and in many instances taught that child right from wrong, you have a relationship with them into adulthood and then something like this happens, is it really that easy to disown them? Even if you condone what they’ve done they’re still your child. It’s really not that simple.

Similarly children of murderers and abusers. Even the children of abusers who were abused themselves still have love for that parent even though they acknowledge what happened. My DP was hideously abused as a child. Enough to land him in permanent care with a disability. And still he says that as.a child he looked forward to his dad visiting, held on to the smallest bit of attention he got from him, and says that it’s hard to explain. He no longer has a relationship with him and wouldn’t want to. But he said that as a child it’s the parent you know, and you’re instinctively drawn to them.

So in a case where the child has not been a victim or ever seen that side to their parent it must be harder to accept.

I know someone who is friends with Christopher Halliwel’s (sp?) son. He has disowned him totally but it’s destroyed him. Because this wasn’t the father he had growing up. He was.a good father, they had a close relationship, and his arrest came totally out of nowhere.

I would want to think that if my dad was convicted of similar heinous crimes I would disown him. But he’s my dad. And that kind of criminal isn’t the dad I’ve ever known. So I can’t say with all honesty it would be easy.

A partner would be different though.

The family of 15 year old Scarlett Jenkinson (one of Brianna Ghey’s murderers) fully supported the guilty verdict and her sentencing and released a statement on it. That must be unusual though

Absolutely, without hesitation, if we are talking about someone like Clifford.

Peter Sutcliffe's wife taught at my nephew's primary school. After he was convicted she carried on living in their marital home. She was a recluse before, and carried on being a recluse but stopped working at the school.

Name changed too.

It is a living hell. I am so lucky and grateful that my family and friends rallied. I gave everyone the choice to use the back door when and if they had to. No one did.

I know people talk about me. I've heard it said that people cannot believe I act normally. They have no idea what the stress of that takes, but I cannot let my children down. Their lives are fucked enough as it is.

The irony of the private school VAT fee discussion is not lost. No one knows the school stepped in immediately and offered bursaries to keep them safe and that's truly made the difference to us. Of course, the same people that comment as above also make comments about how can my kids go to private school. Well, it's because they're safe from venom like that.

Mostly I feel pity for the family member. They've detonated their very successful life to smithereens. But we were the collateral damage and I cannot ever forgive that. Our lives changed when the police came knocking. We are not the same.

The police were right up there on the awful scale. I was definitely tarred with the brush. One woman Detective kept insisting I was a victim. I reserve the right to decide if I am a victim. I choose not. The leaflet she gave me to prove I was was such a big help

I think it can be more complex, my parents have stood beside my brother in spite of his victims being their daughters. They have always had very deep seated issues with misogyny and some narcissistic tendencies, they are all about appearances and are very superior personality types themselves so it wasn’t very shocking that they were putting their son first.

They say terrible things about me to anyone who will listen to them.

People often think that people who commit heinous crimes come from otherwise functional families, I would say it is rare.

I think true psychopaths are born that way but they are very rare. People like KC aren’t psychopaths, they’re a product of their upbringing mixed with their particular psychological characteristics. A much more common occurrence.

Of course there are many people with bad childhoods who don’t turn out as murderers - I think there has to be some innate psychological traits in the mix as well.

I believe the families of the killers of James Bulger have had to move several times.

If that was aimed at me the yes if 1 of my sons turned out to be a murdererer , I would do everything I could to help - dependent on the circumstances.
If a second murdered 3 women premeditatively then yes I would jump off a bridge. I've been through a 3 year court case ( and the person related to me was the innocent party). I think some people have no idea how horrific the court system is to both sides. So , yes, if I was absoultely sure ( he pled guilty to 3 murders) then I would not want to be around anymore. What the feck would be the point. Let's all have xmas and pretend 2 of our brothers aren't murderers. No thanks,

Thank you @toddlertantrumm , that's good to hear and nice to know that on the whole people aren't punishing the children (even though they are adults now) for the heinous crimes of their parents.

Unfortunately I believe that MN have had to turn DMs off for everyone right now due to some posters being send CSA images through them.

@AnEagerSleeper 💐. I cannot imagine what a double betrayal that must be.

I worked with a woman whose son had killed his girlfriend (the mother of his son) ten years earlier, she never visited him or spoke of him and he was her only child. She had no contact with her grandson either, but he was living with his other grandparents so that may have been their choice. She was a nice woman, very quiet and unassuming, and by all accounts she was a very good teacher.

I didn’t know that he and his brother were adopted. That was not reported by the press. Reports say he was the third of four children. I would have thought that was relevant to his defence.

I think the families of child criminals are more responsible than the families of adult criminals.

Not everything you do in adulthood stems back to your childhood, once you leave home you are also shaped by the experiences you have out in society coupled with your personality.

But as a child your parents are largely responsible for your behaviour and curbing it.

There is no way that those children woke up one morning and decided to go out and murder a toddler. They were clearly already troubled. One of the brothers of one of them had already begged to be put in foster care. It was well known that the children were allowed to watch violent video games, and they were clearly running feril given that they were two ten year olds wandering around the town unsupervised.

If they’d had decent parents their troublesome behaviours would have been picked up on. They wouldn’t have been allowed out unsupervised at ten years old, and James Bulger would never have been murdered.

I’m not a believer in vigilante justice so don’t agree that the families should have been targeted. But they should have been charged as accessories, or with neglect or something else which put them on a level with their children.

I wonder if it is genetic. There’s a branch of my family where nearly all of the men have been in prison for violent crime. The women have all moved away and distanced themselves from the family, although the son of one of them has also been in prison for GBH, despite never having met his grandfather or any of his uncles. So nature rather than nurture.

@uhohop

Would you disown your family member if you were in that situation?

I love my child. If they tortured, raped and murdered someone, let alone murdered three people, then yes I would disown them. I could never bear to see them again.

Afair, one of them had a much worse set up than the other, who (I might have this wrong) was originally believed to be the ringleader. The less chaotic wasn't the most awful by far, and the thing is that many, many children are living in similar and worse circumstances and don't do these things..
The whole video thing was over emphasised at the time (according to commentators later).

One family i know of had a son who murdered a man who was terrorizing his sister,he did it on purpose and reported himself and waited for the police.32 years later on life licence and released he rebuilt his life. He bore no resemblance to the young man he was back then.His family however were another sorry tale.They were disgusting people who fed off his story for their own gains,his sister was a mess and felt responsible,his 3 brothers were drug addicts and liars
and thieves. His father was a good man who religiously travelled all over the country every week to see his son whilst his mother was a hard faced cow who used him and his brothers to try to ensure that a sorry reputation kept everyone on side with threats and violence. On release he went home eventually and lasted two weeks before moving and cutting off his entire family after the death of his wonderful father. He wanted no part in any of it. He has since got married and has children of his own and lives a good productive life. His mother and siblings try to trade endlessly on their assumed notoriaty. its disgusting. He was my friend and I loved him despite what he did but I also know other than his dad how twisted and abusive and how much his mother loved the fact that she could control her narrative and make her son into a murdering hero in her eyes. Just awful.